Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  Sharon saw the Texas psychologist almost daily for two weeks. She was, as she explained, “trying to sort out who I was… what my feelings were. Where my life was going. Do I need to slit my throat and end this or what?’’

  The Seventh-Day Adventist counselor encouraged her to call Mike. Despite the wanton infidelity, despite her fragmented loyalties, the counselor insisted that her marriage still had a chance. It was, he said, worth saving.

  Sharon recalled the man’s words: “You really want Mike to love you more than anything. You’re testing him… to see if he’ll still take you back after you’ve been such a naughty girl.”

  Sharon bought into it. She told herself that her affair with Perry Nelson was an offshoot of unresolved issues in her marriage. It was not because she was so in love with Perry. No, not at all. She told the counselor she would give Mike another chance. She would give up Dr. Nelson.

  “Perry’s got to go,” she said, firmness in her voice growing with each word. “Perry has disrupted my life. I’ve destroyed his life. Maybe if Mike and I can rebuild, Perry and Julie can rebuild?”

  It was after 11 P.M. when Preacher Fuller’s jet from Denver finally touched down at the Dallas airport. Sharon’s stomach was crocheted into knots. It was an emotionally raw reunion. Tears fell on both sides as they held each other. Both agreed they wanted to save their marriage. Even so, the bitterness was not completely forsaken. Sharon vented her anger over why her husband’s shortcomings had forced her into another man’s arms once more. It was his fault, too.

  From his suitcase in their motel room, the minister withdrew a see-through nightie.

  Sharon’s eyes popped and she hit the ceiling.

  “You flew down here for a piece of tail! That’s all you did!”

  Mike tried to persuade Sharon that she was wrong. She had jumped to the wrong conclusion. He had come to Texas because he wanted to save their marriage. And, as even Sharon would later concede, he must have been telling the truth. Mike Fuller sat up all night, stiffly, uncomfortably, while she berated him about everything from their sex life to the manner of his day-to-day attire. He took it all, one shot after another and for good reason: He had two little girls at home who needed a mother.

  After four days of “couples counseling,” endless talking, and a wading pool of tears, the Fullers drove back to Colorado. Beyond pulling over for gasoline and food, they made only one stop on their way up north toward Denver and suburban Arvada, the city where Mike had been relocated to a new church. Mike parked in the Nelsons’ driveway in Rocky Ford and went inside the house while Sharon stayed slumped in the car, embarrassed and anxious. She had promised never to speak to Perry again. A few minutes later, Mike returned.

  The preacher scooted back behind the wheel and announced he had had it out with Dr. Nelson. He warned the doctor to back off, that Sharon had made up her mind to put her family back together. Sharon was going to be a mother to her two little girls. Sharon was going to be a good wife once more.

  When they arrived at Mike’s rented house in Arvada, two elderly women from church were up waiting in the front room. The women had been employed to baby-sit Rochelle and Denise while their father went after their mother.

  Sharon tried to make pleasant conversation, but she knew what they were thinking.

  “As I walk in… these two little old spinster ladies are judging me. It was all over the church. Everybody knew that I’d left Mike… that we’d reconciled… that God had brought us back together,” she said later.

  The Arvada church had an enormous congregation, the largest of Mike Fuller’s hop-scotching ministerial career. Two thousand members, give or take a hundred or so, knew Sharon Fuller by her reputation. Most knew that Rev. Fuller’s wife had an affair with a church elder down in La Junta. A few heard it was not the first such affair for the striking, albeit mixed-up, woman. When Sharon took the second pew with her children for church services, she did so amid dagger stares and catty gossip. Sharon made her own vow from that pew: She wasn’t going to put up with it… not for long.

  To escape the tedium of her world, Sharon took a job at a Denver area hospital as staffing coordinator. The hours were long and the work stressful as she made sure personnel were in place whenever sickness or snow left the hospital without some staff. The job kept her busy, but it didn’t stop her thinking about Perry Nelson. Occasionally she called Barb Ruscetti in Trinidad for an update, but she didn’t break Mike’s “no talk with the doc” rule. She passed phone messages through Barb and even sent a few notes in the mail. At night, she drank a six-pack of beer. By day, she drank vodka mixed with fruit juice.

  When Perry Nelson sent her a little silver music box that played “Somewhere My Love,” Sharon made up her mind. She quit her job and told Mike she was moving out. This time for good. He could have everything but her final paycheck, the sofa and her sewing machine. She said she was getting an apartment in Denver, maybe later returning to Rocky Ford. Who knew? No one was going to dictate the rules of her life. Not anymore. First off, she went to visit her sister Judy in Colorado Springs.

  She did not say she was going back to Perry, but, of course, that was her plan.

  She called Perry and he drove the Buick LaSabre convertible to the Springs. He knocked on Judy Douglas’s front door one evening with an excited knock, an impatient rap. But the man was all smiles when the door swung open. Sharon, who had been sipping brandy with her sister, was elated. Judy thought she had never seen a happier couple.

  That night Perry took Sharon to a motel in Manitou Springs and they made love all night. Just as she promised they would every night. Every day. All the time.

  Sharon tried to sort out her life and she needed time and support to do so. Instead of returning to Rocky Ford right away, she alternated her time in the Denver area and at one point she asked Judy if she and her daughters could stay at her place for a while. Mike had not wanted Sharon to take the girls, but at least in the eyes of the law, Sharon was their mother. Judy, who was struggling through her own marital problems, was glad for the diversion that houseguests could bring. Judy bought a second hand bunk bed and turned her downstairs into a bedroom for Rochelle and Denise. Sharon planned on working for a Colorado Springs Pearle Vision, and though Judy had her own four kids to raise, she said she would help her younger sister with the little girls.

  Sharon, for the first time in a long time, seemed happy. Maybe she would make something of her life, after all. Maybe she had pulled herself together and was finally going to do the right thing.

  The hope was short-lived.

  Mike Fuller had made no bones about it to anyone who would listen: Sharon was an terrible mother and he’d raise the girls without her rotten-to-the-core influence. There was no way he’d have Rochelle and Denise live in sin with their mother. The woman was unfit. When Karl Wheeler heard of Mike’s plan to take the kids from Sharon by court order, he offered to accompany him on the task. Mike knew Sharon was hiding out at Judy’s place in the Springs. Karl Wheeler considered himself the voice of reason. If the minister was going to spout off, then Karl would be there to listen and calm the jilted husband.

  “Mike was a feisty sort of guy for a preacher. It didn’t take much for him to double up his fists and take a poke at someone,” Karl said later.

  The two men drove from Rocky Ford to Colorado Springs in the Wheelers’ brand-new white Lincoln Continental with a maroon top. They stopped at the El Paso County Sheriff’s office and explained the situation. A deputy agreed to escort them to Judy’s residence to enforce a custody order.

  Karl remained in the Lincoln while the deputy and the preacher went inside to settle the issue of custody. As Karl waited, he wondered how things could have turned so ugly.

  Perry, how’d you get in such a mess?

  Sharon, stunned at the intrusion, claimed it was she who should have the girls. She was their mother. Rochelle and Denise needed her.

  No one bought it.

  In the end, custody papers in he
r face, she gave in.

  “Let him have them,” she said quietly.

  Judy thought her sister didn’t fight that hard to keep the little girls. Not really.

  Not as hard as she would have if she had been their mother.

  When Sharon Fuller returned to Rocky Ford for good in December 1976, it brought an unexpected sense of relief to Julie Nelson. She had been unable to eat or sleep decently for weeks. Julie knew her marriage was over and her husband had wanted to be with the preacher’s wife. She even suspected they had met during one of his business trips to Denver, though she couldn’t prove it. She longed for the day when she wouldn’t have to prove anything. When she wouldn’t have to worry she would stumble on a motel-room receipt or a bill from a jeweler for something given to the Other Woman. When Christmas came and went, it was clear the family would never be as it was before Sharon Nelson had crept into their lives.

  The preacher’s wife had a hold on the doctor that was tungsten.

  When Perry told Julie that he and Sharon were once again going to make a life together, he said that she could stay on in Rocky Ford and even keep her old job in the medical office.

  Julie didn’t think so.

  “I’m going to California,” she said. “I’ve already made up my mind. No matter what happens here.”

  Mother and youngest daughter packed what they could load into an old Pontiac on January 2, 1977. Julie knew she was not coming back. Lorri halfway hoped that her parents would work it out eventually. She didn’t want to leave her father. She didn’t see why she had to go.

  When Perry came out to wish them a safe trip, he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and whispered, “Julie, everything’s going to be all right.”

  Julie said nothing. She had heard that before. Ten thousand times.

  “I meant to get you a better car,” he said.

  Julie didn’t care one whit about the car. “It’s fine,” she answered.

  “Maybe, if things don’t work out,” Perry continued, “you’ll want to come back and we can start over.”

  His remark stunned Julie. “I won’t,” she said. She couldn’t imagine why he would even suggest such a thing. “And if I ever did,” she said, “I would not want to start over here.”

  Not with you.

  She stopped herself from saying more. It was a reflex, not a true assessment about how she felt. She wondered how Perry and Sharon thought they could start over in Rocky Ford. They had stirred up a scandal the likes of which no one had ever seen. And they believed they could act as though they had done nothing wrong? Incredible.

  Still crying as she put the car into gear and drove out of town, something came over Julie and stopped the tears. Almost in an instant, she started laughing with Lorri. All of the hurt of her marriage was gone. All of the pain she had endured left as suddenly as the sun dropping behind a cloud.

  She knew everything would be all right.

  “I had a promise from God,” Julie said later. ”I couldn’t have shed another tear from that moment on.”

  When her mood was foul, Sharon had the demeanor of an executioner. When she started back to work in the Trinidad optometry office, she picked up where she had left off. She would make no doctor’s employee of the month, even if the office had a staff of one.

  Some of Dr. Nelson’s patients tolerated Sharon, but many found her to be snotty, impatient and downright rude. A well-to-do family from up the river was one of the first to bail out on Dr. Nelson’s practice because of Sharon’s rotten attitude. The family’s youngest son planned on getting contact lenses as a wedding present for his 17-year-old bride. Since Barb was mired in a mountain of paperwork, Perry asked Sharon to dispense the lenses to the girl.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Barb watched as Sharon showed the girl how to put the hard contacts in. The girl winced in pain, as many first-time wearers do. She started to shake and cry.

  “This hurts,” she sobbed. “Please get them out! Take them out!”

  For some reason, Sharon just sat there. So Barb got up and helped the girl.

  “I don’t want these,” the girl said, tears still running down her cheeks. “They hurt.”

  Sharon stood up like a rocket.

  “You’re nothing but a damn baby! I won’t even bother with you.” She turned on her heels and advised Barb that if she wanted to dispense the lenses, it was fine with her.

  “I’m not even going to bother with her!”

  Then she disappeared into a back office.

  The young husband shot a glare in Sharon’s direction and told Barb they didn’t have to take that kind of abuse from anyone.

  “Mrs. Ruscetti,” he said, “this doesn’t pertain to you, but none of my family will ever come back to this office as long as she’s here.”

  And they never did.

  As much as she enjoyed the full freedom of the office, at least as it had been in the days before Sharon, Barb Ruscetti began to hate to leave her desk. It seemed that every time she did, she’d return to find Sharon rifling papers, going through files and generally poking her nose into every piece of paperwork she could get her hands on.

  As the guerrilla attacks on the office files continued, no matter how often Barb asked Sharon to cool it, she’d laugh it off. Tension increased. Sharon was pushing Barb’s buttons with reckless abandon.

  “What are you looking for?” Barb asked, as Sharon bent over and fanned out some files from a bottom drawer. Caught, Sharon stood up, her skirt still clinging halfway up her thigh.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Then get the hell out from behind my desk or I’ll throw you out the damn window!”

  Sharon smiled and moved out of the way.

  Barb wished she had pushed her out. In the long run, it probably would have been an act of mercy for so many.

  Chapter 8

  SHARON’S EYES HAD TURNED FROM BLUE TO red. Her prettily painted mouth was a taut gash of lipstick and anger. If she was a bitch on wheels, as Barb Ruscetti had characterized her during their first encounter, that morning in Perry Nelson’s Trinidad office she was running the Indy 500. She had heard more bad news: Now Mike was seeking full, permanent custody of Rochelle and Denise in Otero County Superior Court. When she arrived to tell Perry about it, she stomped her heels like a petulant child and flung obscenities about the room like boomerangs welded of steak knives. One after another sliced through the air. Sharon seemed to pay no mind that patients could hear her tirade. She cared nothing about anyone. Sharon Fuller was, as Barb could see, the center of her own universe. And she was fit to be tied. “That fucker! That fucker can’t do this to me!”

  Barb was aghast. This was Dr. Nelson’s office, not a miners’ pool hall. She tried to understand Sharon’s bitterness. She tried very hard. Each time she went to the place in her heart where she could retrieve sympathy for others, she came up with nothing for the woman slamming things around the office and using every dirty name in the book against her husband. The minister’s estranged wife was not going to get any support from her. She had done her husband dirtier than any woman Barb had ever seen, heard about, read about. She was vile and evil. Sharon had lost her children because she was a neglectful mother. The two little girls were better off without her.

  “Perry, call the goddamn judge in La Junta and put a stop to this. You know him! Call him now!”

  Perry stepped back from Sharon’s screaming mouth and slowly shook his head.

  “No,” he said, quietly but with considerable firmness. “This is between you and Mike. I’m staying out of it.”

  Sharon grabbed for the phone. In a minute she was on the line screaming at the top of her lungs to the unlucky court employee who picked up the line.

  “Don’t fuck with me and my girls!” Sharon raged into the mouthpiece. “They’re my girls! Mike can’t have them!”

  After she vented her anger for what had to be only a few seconds, but seemed much longer, the line went dead. Enraged at being disconnected by some two-bit
clerk, Sharon threw the phone halfway across the back office. It clattered against the floor.

  “I’ll show that son of a bitch! If he thinks he’s going to take my girls away from me! I’m not going to lose my daughters! They’re mine! Mine!`

  A few weeks later, Perry pulled Barb aside in the office to tell her what had happened when Sharon went to court to hammer out a final joint-custody agreement with her former husband.

  “Oh Barb, it was something else,” Perry said one afternoon when Sharon was not around.

  “Well, what happened?” Barb asked.

  “Mike got up and said what she did—she didn’t even get to talk—the judge just said, ‘I declare you a whore, and I am taking your two daughters away from you! You will not even have visiting rights until they turn thirteen years old! When they turn thirteen years of age they can make up their minds if they want to stay with their so-called mother or go with their father.’”

  Barb couldn’t imagine a judge saying such things. No man of the law talked that way. But then she couldn’t have dreamed up a woman like Sharon Lynn Fuller, either.

  Sharon hated living in another woman’s house. Signs of Perry’s life with Julie were evident everywhere she looked: the wallpaper, the carpet, the way the dishes had been put away. All were reminders of her man’s life with another woman. She couldn’t stand living there one more minute. They put the Nelson place in Rocky Ford up for sale. Sharon sold the convertible Mike had left her, and she and Perry bought a tiny gray ‘‘dollhouse’’ further down 10th, between Pine and Locust Streets.

  The instant their divorces went through, Sharon wanted to get married. She had given up so much for Perry Nelson that she damn well would not tolerate a long engagement. Perry readily agreed. In reality, he had no choice. He had been the focus of such derision since leaving Julie for Sharon that a happy ending would be his only salvation.

  Sharon made her own wedding dress, not because she had to, but because she could and she wanted to. It was a Gunny Sax pattern that flowed full and long to the floor with a cinched bodice that accentuated her full breasts. She selected a light, wheat-colored material, though it was more a preference than an acknowledgment that white fabric would have been inappropriate for the bride. She also fashioned the flouncy brim of a straw hat with silk flowers and lace. She picked out a beige leisure suit for Perry.